Dubuffet
Les Phenomenes

GaleríaColibrí
June 19 - July 18, 1964
Catalogue #6

THE "PHENOMENA" OF JEAN DUBUFFET
Elaine Johnson

Jean Dubuffet, born in 1901, is possibly the most original artist to have emerged in France since the war. Surely he is the most influential. Like Gaugin, Dubuffet did not dedicate himself to art until he was forty. Since his exploration of media has been constant and obsessive, it was only natural that within two years printmaking should become an integral force in his stylistic development as an artist. Recently, in relation to Dubuffet's total oeuvre, printmaking has assumed unprecedented importance. He has conceived and executed a monumental cycle of lithographs, Les Phenomenes.

Except for brief experiments with such novel techniques as engraving on cigar boxes and cheese boxes (demonstrations in honor of L'Art brut), Dubuffet hs overwhelmingly favored lithography as a print medium. His first three lithographic essays were made in July, 1944 on a borrowed hand press in his own studio. Shortly thereafter, in order to gain systematic technical training, Dubuffet apprenticed himself to the master lithographers, the brothers Mourlot.
Dubuffet worked in the Mourlot atelier for several months, reviewing historic techniques and exploring new ones. During this time he produced close to seventy prints. Among them, the most important were the illustrations for Francis Ponge's Matiere et Memoire...and Guillevec's Les Murs, published in 1944 and 1950. In the thirteen years which followed his apprenticeship - and preceded the start of the PHENOMENA - Dubuffet worked sporadically at printmaking and executed about 100 prints, many as traditional book illustrations, some as independent works, a few as series such as the small suite, The Body of Woman, 1950.

In the autumn months of 1953, after a three-year hiatus from printmaking, Dubuffet made a calculated decision concerning the technical direction of his work as a lithographer. Briefly, in order to compose his lithographs, he took imprints of various substances on transfer paper, then cut up and assembled pieces of these sheets and transferred them to the stone or zinc for printing. Such compositions anticipate later drawings, paintings and scultptures called "assemblages". They also forecast the technique of the cycle the PHENOMENA.

In 1958, with the experience of thirteen years, Dubuffet decided that he needed his own lithographic studio staffed by his own skilled craftsmen if he were to achieve the extraordinary kind of lithograph he so boldly envisioned. He established two printmaking ateliers, one in Venice, the other in Paris, and began the experiments which culminate in the PHENOMENA.

Apparently Dubuffet's original intention as he set about making the first trial essays
which resulted in the PHENOMENA, was simply to collect interesting imprints (much as he had done in 1953), cut them up, reassemble them, then transfer them onto zinc plates which would then be composed into color lithographs.

Dubuffet soon found, however, that most of the imprints he took (such as tracings of the human back, rock fissures, orange peels, chopped straw) were visually much too satisfying to be altered. Thus he began printing selected examples "as is", in black and white. Stimulated by the success of the imprints, Dubuffet explored an inexhaustible register of other unusual techniques. He experimented ceaselessly. Foir instance, sometimes he exploited the strange effects caused by the mixture of incompatible inks, or the admixture of benzine and water. Other times he added acid, caused the oxidation of the zinc plate in sunlight, or dragged a rag of burning alcohol across its resin-coated surface. Using many of the very plates from which he ha printed the series of black and white images, he combined these to print his color lithographs. He sometimes used as many as eight plates in creating these lithographs of superimposed color.

In his paintings and collages Dubuffet has, of course, often conceived works in series devoted to a single theme. The cycle of lithographs, the PHENOMENA, also such a group, stems stylistically from the earlier series of paintings Soils and terrains, Topogaphies, and especially Texturologies. The dichotomy of the title, PHENOMENA, is clearly deliberate and suggests two meanings, one thematic, the other technical. Most of the titles of albums into which the series is arranged as well as the titles of the individual prints describe natural substances or occurrences observed. The albums have general themes and are named: The Elemental, Land and Sea, Emptiness and Shadow, Earth Theater, Soils, Field of Silence, and so forth. Individual prints relating to these general themes, are called Cosmography Dust, Air currents, dark Ripening, Deterioration, Pavement of Skin, and so on. then too, many of dubuffet's techniques are so extraordinary, that their rare and strange occurrences, in themselves, deserve description as 'phenomena'.

The PHENOMENA is composed of some 325 lithographs. They are a testimony of Dubuffet's inventiveness with textures. Effects range from silken delicacy to burlap roughness, from plushy softness to rock-like hardness, from density to weightlessness. Each printed sheet could serve as Leonardo's wall. For the most part, the prints in the PHENOMENA result in images without a central focal point, without precise contours, or definite lines. When large groups of them are seen at one, they seem remarkably similar. Soon however - especially for the viewer privileged to study them at length - their strong individualities assert themselves with astonishing force.

As a group the PHENOMENA testify to Dubuffet's philosophy that the world is incoherent, and that one should seriously delight in it. In the ambiguity of their imagery and scale, they underscore his belief that art should be a cryptogram which cannot be deciphered, which cannot be explained, but which can provide endless roads for every imagination.

The albums for the PHENOMENA have usually been issued in editions of from 13 to 35. Most frequently, they are printed on Arches with a sheet size of about 45 by 64 cm. Occassional subjects from this series have also been issued singly, often in slightly larger sheets of Rives, Japan, and sometimes Arches.

An excellent catalogue of Dubuffet's complete graphic work (Jean Dubuffet Grafik) was published in 1961 by the Sikeborg (Denmark) Museum. It contains a general catalogue and introduction by Noel Arnaud, Dubuffet's official biographer.

EXHIBIT

*1. Allegrese Lithograph 18 3/4 x 13/ 3/4 19/60
*2. Ballet Lithograph 19 x 14 1/2 18/30
3. Congres Podreaux Lithograph 20 1/2 x 15 4/20
4. Developement au Sol Lithograph 20 1/2 x 15 A/P
**5. Disparates Lithograph 21 x 15 1/4 12/30
*6. Esprit de Terre Lithograph 20 x 15 17/30
7. Feu Lithograph 20 1/2 x 15 1/2 5/20
*8. Jeunesse Lithograph 20 x 15 16/30
9. La Legende du Mur Lithograph 21 x 16 A/P
**10.Le Vent et L'Eau Lithograph 21 x 15 1/2 16/30
11.Les Squales Lithograph 21 x 16 16/25
12.L'Haliene du Sol Lithograph 17 x 14 1/2 13/20
13.Mycelium Lithograph 19 x 15 8/20
14.Poussiere Lithograph 20 x 1/2 x 15 A/P
*15.Profusion Lithograph 20 1/2 x 15 1/4 15/30
*16.Rumeur Lithograph 20 x 13 3/4 11/30
17.Texte Nebuleux Lithograph 21 x 15 1/4 A/P
18.Texture Pierreuse Lithograph 20 3/4 x 15 1/2 A/P
19. Theatre des... Lithograph 21 1/2 15 1/4 3/20
20.Trame Lithograph 21 3/4 x 15 3/4 A/P